Hello my dears! A part of me wonders if i can keep up this weekly thing where I manage to flood your inboxs on a schedule because wow this is so much harder than I anticipated. But I really did start this all as a challenge to myself to keep writing so…yay. I’m doing my best. 

Also this editorial is a little longer than others, so if you dislike the witty commentary and want recommendations, scroll down to the bottom. I promise I won’t be offended or know! 

So as many of you know, I recently crossed the threshold of my third decade. And while at my little gathering, a friend asked me anything I’d learned in all my years of life and well, fam, idk.

But then on a five hour bus trip to Boston, I was thinking about that question and realized that although I have no fucking idea of advice to give people just because I am old, I thought of the characters I’d been watching as I’ve grown up, particularly one from my favorite video game, Final Fantasy X, Auron.  

First off, this fucker is 35 years old in a genre of games where being 22 is fucking ancient. When I first played the game, I was the adorable age of 13, and just everything about him made me so angry. He’s introduced as knowing basically everything and not telling you, the 17-year-old protagonist, instead advising that you should figure it out and implying that he would give you hints/help as you continued along. It would be like adults to just not tell you about the things you need to know, saying that the so called life experience would help you out. And as I continued playing it, my hatred for this character grew more and more.  

Also I’m about to spoil a twenty year old game, but I’ll be vague just in case you are interested in playing. Which you should. Cause it’s great.

When you get near the end of the game, you, the progatonist, discover that the way the world is is completely fucked even beyond the ways you originally thought. Even if Auron had sat down and explained everything, it wouldn’t have mattered because, dammit, he was right. You as both the character and the player had to experience it to understand the situation. But when I first played it, it was still infuriating. He was still so much older. He had gone through this experience before. He could’ve given us more than just some hints.  

As time passed and I grew older than every character in the game (even the villain! Who is 28!! Goddammit!), I realized - fuck! Maybe Auron wasn’t being coy! Maybe he had no fucking idea of what to do! But at the very least, he realized that it wasn’t his job or his decision to make to tell you how to feel about how the world was falling apart. But he could at least be there to help guide you. And now that I’m thirty and people ask me for advice, all I can do is let out a mumble and run the other direction. The world is so strange and things are always changing, and really all you can do is continue pushing forward. Sometimes, you can tell people how your story went, but beyond that, it’s really their life to experience. 

After 17 years of playing this game, it’s taught me so many lessons every time I pick it back up. Having all the answers is not really possible. Just because it looks like you’re killing it from the outside doesn’t mean you aren’t still confused as fuck about what’s going on and how to fix it. The youth might continue making the same mistakes and they might dismiss your opinion as just someone who did it once upon a time and doesn’t know how things are done now, and sometimes they need to fail in order to understand.  

When I was younger, it took me three or so play through to realize that maybe Auron had a point. And now, twenty years after it’s initial release, his quiet confidence, subtle guidance, and forcing the party to fail time and time again, really helped them all to become stronger people.

Still weird I had a crush on him at age 13 though.  

MOVING ON, time for some fun recommendations.